Month: July 2025

Kitties in the heat, our two headed cat, and first appointment with the new pain clinic physiotherapist

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

As I write this, it’s just past 4:30pm, and we’ve surpassed our predicted high of 31C/88F and reached 33C/91F.

That couple of degrees makes a huge difference!

It could be worse; some areas to the south of us reported up to 40C/104F today.

It was a relatively cool 16C/61F when I did my morning rounds at about 6am. I even spotted the two feral kittens that are starting to show up regularly. No idea what’s happened to the other one or two that I saw.

When we got home from the physio appointment, there we were immediately greeted by Sir Robin, while Havarti and Eyelet remained splatted in the shade. Eyelet got up, waiting for their special food, while Havarti just lay there, unmoving – so I got a picture! The last image above was taken after everyone had a chance to eat their fill, and the full belly babies were back in the shade. Grommet was around, too; just not where I could get him in the picture.

Before we headed out, I spotted this on my bed and had to get a picture.

It looks like we’ve got a two headed cat in there! Ghosty and Tin Whistle had merged into one. 😄

That inside cats have also been splayed all over, but it’s a whole lot better for them, that’s for sure. Thank God for the AC my brother gave us. Between that and the living room, and a fan blowing the cooler air to there rest of the house, it’s so much better than previous years – and now my daughters have their AC set up in their upstairs “apartment”. It’s the fist summer since living here that the upstairs has been at all bearable. Even with that, they had to strategically place a fan to counter the wave of hot air coming up the stairs.

My husband and I got to enjoy the truck’s AC when we headed out just before noon for his appointment at the pain clinic. This was his first appointment with their physiotherapist, which made it more of a meet and greet. We met him last week, of course – he even remembered us a bit – but this was a more dedicated meeting.

It was a combination of interesting and encouraging… and not.

The interesting thing was, after asking questions about my husband’s specific issues and past treatment (the conclusion with the doctor, last time, was basically what we expected; he’s already tried everything there is to try, and there isn’t anything more or new they can offer him), he talked a fair bit about how things have changed in physio in more recent years. He talked about all the typical recommendations given out for decades; loose weight, exercise more, focus on core exercises, etc. simply haven’t been working. They weren’t helping people get past their pain or improve healing of injuries. There have been a lot of studies trying to figure out why, and they found many factors were at play. An example would be how they’d have two groups of people doing comparable exercises. Some people would report improvement, even though there was no measurable improvement in their condition. Others would report no improvement at all. When taking blood tests before and ever activities, it was found that people all had inflammation. The group that reported feeling better has less inflamation, the other didn’t – and the only difference was that the ones that reported improvement actually enjoyed the activities they were doing. The ones with the worst outcomes did not enjoy the exercises they were doing, and they had higher inflammation after their activities. Inflammation in general, it was found, played the biggest role in how people felt. It basically came down to individual body chemistry.

There were also things like how doing small amounts of activity more often was more beneficial that doing lots in a short time. He also talked about how misleading the “in your head” idea was. When he did talk about weight, he mentioned studies that found that when people enjoyed their activities, did them regularly without overdoing it, etc. they reported improvements, both physical and mental, with no change in their weights at all. This was something I appreciated hearing, since part of why my husband’s conditions deteriorated so much was because he started seeing a nurse practitioner (the only person available after our regular doctor went on medical leave and didn’t come back), she basically ignored the reason he as there – his back injury – but focused almost entirely on his weight. His blood sugars, too, but it all came down to his weight. Of course, in being the “good” patient, he just went along with it. For some two years. It was like she believed if only he would lose the weight, all the other things would magically go away. Of course, he never lost any weight at all in that time, and we finally insisted that she start focusing on his back injury. When he saw the spine specialist, the damage was too severe, and there was really nothing that could be done but give him stronger and stronger pain killers.

So having someone who knew to focus on the actual reason my husband was there, and not pet causes, was always a relief.

That was the encouraging part.

The discouraging part was, we already knew all this. This is really old news, even though most doctors don’t seem to know anything about these studies. I’ve been reading papers on this stuff for more than a decade.

After some discussion, a plan of action was worked out. My husband will start doing tai chi again (he used to teach it at one point), starting out by finding his limit, then maintaining the activity regularly, based on those limits.

Next month, we’ll be having a phone appointment with him.

As we were leaving and talking about it, my husband said he felt like the guy was a puppy discovering a new and fabulous toy and being all excited about it. Which is only because we were already aware of the stuff he was talking about already.

We shall see how it pans out.

Once the appointment was done, with a follow up telephone appointment booked at the end of this month, we headed over to the nearby Walmart to have lunch – breakfast, for my husband. My older daughter got quite sick last night, and hadn’t even been able to eat all night, while she was working. I made sure there was something she could eat before going to bed for the day! She sent me some funds to pick up heat and eats, which I did while my husband finished his lunch. Then it was off for home, with a brief stop at the post office. My husband had ordered more Tei Fu lotion for me, since it helps so much with the Charlie horses. He ordered three tubes, so the company added a freebie. It was a bottle of cordyceps, for “… energy, stamina, endurance and strength”. That one free bottle costs more than one tube of Tei Fu lotion! That’s quite a freebie!

I’m happy to be well stocked with Tei Fu lotion, though. I was running low.

When we got back, we found my younger daughter had the gate open for us, and was out hanging laundry in this heat! She’d done all their laundry, including bedding, plus my laundry, too! What a sweetie.

I planned to head out to water the garden this evening, but I’m not so sure about that right now. We’re at 31C/88F, with the humidex putting us at 33C/91F, and apparently won’t be dropping below 30C/86F until after 9pm! Even the overnight low is expected to be 21C/70F

I think I’ll just do my evening rounds and go to bed much earlier than usual. I’ve been waking up as it starts to get light out, anyhow, so I may as well wait and do the watering in the morning. That way, I won’t be shocking the plants with cold well water. Something the winter squash and melons could certainly do with out, with how much damage they got from that one cold night a while back! We’ve definitely lost a few completely.

Not looking forward to doing my evening rounds this evening, that’s for sure! Stepping outside is like walking into a wall of heat.

Ugh.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: rescuing neglected strawberries, mulching potatoes and more

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Last year, we planted a little plot of Albion everbearing strawberries. They did fantastic!

Until they got eaten by deer.

Repeatedly.

They even tore through the net barrier I’d put around them, and I ended up having to use some leftover pieces of chicken wire. By then, there wasn’t much of the season left, but the bed did get heavily mulched for the winter, with some chicken wire draped over the whole bed for protection.

I did remove some of the mulch in the spring, but in the end, the bed got severely neglected this year.

Amazingly, some strawberries survived.

The strawberries I’d planted in front of the new asparagus bed, however, did not. Not a single one made it. I had simply taken too long before planting them, I think.

We do, however, now have a third Jersey Giant asparagus fern growing! So I still have some home for the rest of those, and the purple asparagus.

The first thing to do was to find and dig up the Albion strawberries and see how many there were.

I’m afraid I had to be pretty rough with them. The crab grass rhizomes were bad enough, but I was also finding new elm roots invading from below. When I planted this bed, I’d dug up as many roots as I could, then covered the bottom with several layers of carboard before adding fresh soil on top, in which the strawberries were planted.

You’d never know I’d done all that, from the roots I was finding!

Those elm trees have got to go.

I actually found quite a few more strawberry plants than I expected! In the end, I found 10 plants, plus a runner with fresh roots in it, though no leaves yet.

All of these went into a bucket with some water while I worked on where to plant them.

At first, when I thought there were just a few, I had expected to plant them at one end of the bed with the Spoon tomatoes, but there were enough that I decided to reclaim the space I’d planted bare root strawberries in that failed. The shallow trench they were planted in were, of course, filled with elm tree seedlings, along with plenty of other weeds.

There was still some soil left in the old kiddie pool we used as a planter last year, so once the weeds were cleared out, I used that to fill in the shallow trench the strawberries had been planted in. This was more for the asparagus, since I didn’t feel I’d been able to cover the crowns properly on that side.

While clearing the weeds out, I did not find a single sign of the bare root strawberries that had been planted there.

Totally my own fault. They should have gone in the ground as soon as I got them. Instead, they sat for about a month.

Then I decided to take some short logs from the old kitchen garden retaining wall and set them along the little wire fence, to prevent erosion and water run off.

That done, I thoroughly watered the newly added soil. It was bone dry in that little pool. Once everything was well hydrated, I spaced out the strawberry plants in between where the asparagus crowns were planted.

Once those were in and watered again, I went and got more grass clippings to mulch both the strawberries and the asparagus.

Then, because I had enough for it, I got more loads of grass clippings and mulched the potatoes.

By this time, it was getting pretty late, and I was being eaten alive by mosquitoes.

I did continue watering the rest of the garden beds for the night, though. As long as I was moving the mosquitoes weren’t as bad.

While I was watering the grapes, I spotted some friends.

We haven’t seen these in a couple of years! They are Abbott’s sphinx Sphecodina abbottii  and look VERY different, at different stages of development.

Around the edge of the spruce grove, I paused to check on the wild saskatoons growing there.

We actually have ripe berries developing!

I got a picture, then I ate them!

They’re not as big and juicy as they could be; we haven’t had a lot of rain, and the undergrowth is starting to crowd them again. We need to get under them with the loppers and clear it all out again.

All in all, things are going pretty good in the garden. At least, for our region. I have to keep reminding myself of that when I watch gardening videos, and I see all these people posting about their huge plants and amazing harvests. They all tend to be at least a month ahead of us!

I’m happy I got as much done this evening as I did. I’m not sure how much I’ll get to go tomorrow. Not only will it be hotter, but I’ll be driving my husband to his appointment. Thankfully, the AC in the truck works fine, because that heat is going to be brutal on him.

After tomorrow, the highs are supposed to drop a bit for the next while, then get right back up to the “heat warnings in effect” level again.

On the plus side, the peppers and eggplant will be just loving these temperatures!

😄😄

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: summer squash, thinning by transplanting

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

This evening, I finally had a chance to do some transplanting! I’d really wanted to do them earlier, but things just didn’t pan out.

My first priority was to get the summer squash bed cleaned up, and to transplant our “extras”.

I’d planted three groups of three seeds of Black Zucchini and White Scallop squash. The zucchini almost all came up – one spot had only two come up – but the white scallop squash saw only two germinate, in one spot.

That left me with two empty spots – and those were being filled with tiny elm seedlings taking over!

So the first thing I had to do, after taking the protecting netting off, was move the mulch aside and get in with the hand cultivator to weed as much as possible.

That took a while.

I really, really hate those elm seeds.

With the white scallop squash, I simply moved the smaller plant into the empty spot beside it. I did the same with the zucchini that had only two plants growing. Then I very carefully removed the extras from the other two spots that had all three zucchini seeds germinate.

I turned out to be wrong. I must have dropped a seed or something, because one of them had four!

I found spaces for them in other beds. Two went into gaps between the three types of winter squash, which are still recovering from getting hit with that one cold night. One went into the end of the bed with the Spoon tomatoes in it. Those all got protective plastic collars. The last one went into an open space in the high raised bed, left from harvesting some radishes and turnips.

Thanks to my SIL using their big zero turn mower on the outer yard, I had a whole lot of grass clippings available. I needed more mulch around the original summer squash bed, plus the one in the high raised bed got a grass clipping mulch, with a final watering to soak the mulch.

Hopefully, the transplants will survive alright. Squash don’t like their roots disturbed, but there was no way I could take them out without using a lot of water and washing the roots off completely. Those ridiculous elm seedlings were wrapping their tap roots around everything!

That done, I had time to work on the next job.

Rescuing strawberries.

Coming up next!

The Re-Farmer

A quick (ha!) run down

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Today was my day to go to my mother’s to get her monthly blood test done, so I just did my usual rounds this morning. My daughter was a sweetheart and took care of watering everything before it got too hot. Tomorrow is supposed to be even hotter, but we might also get thunderstorms, depending on which app I check, so we’ll see if we have to water twice again or not. I’m starting this past 9:30pm, and we’re still under heat warnings!

I spotted a couple of the new kittens while doing my rounds this morning. Just the two of them.

I also spotted a garden friend.

What a unique looking frog!

Once the rounds were done, I was soon off to my mother’s.

Going to my mother’s did not go as expected. Which is saying something, since visiting her rarely goes as expected.

The plan was to wait until home care came for the morning med assist, then I would take my mother for her blood work. She’s got a new 2 week schedule, and her morning visits are now at 9:30-9:40am. They seem to switch from 9am to 9:30 fairly often. She gets 10 minutes scheduled in the morning, rather than the usual 5, because they’re supposed to be doing things like emptying her commode and offering assistance in getting dressed. I don’t think they’re doing that. They just give her her meds and leave.

When I got there, I went into the lock box to get the paperwork for this month’s lab tests; it’s a place to store them where they won’t get “lost”. My mother told me to give her her pills, but I said no. We’ll wait for the home care aid to arrive.

Which is when she told me they didn’t come for the two evening visits on Monday…. no… Sunday…

That’s when she showed me the new schedule (the old one was still taped to the wall), where she’d written “no one” around those two time slots. She still kept trying to tell me it was Sunday, but it couldn’t have been.

Since they didn’t show up, she took them herself.

She would have had only Monday left in the lock box, and would have gotten the Monday morning meds from there. The pharmacy tried to deliver her refills later in the day, but she though I’d already paid for them, so she told them she didn’t have enough cash, and tried to say I paid for them. They left her with 1 week’s refills (for free) until it could be straightened out. That got worked out and my mother was supposed to get the refills delivered today. I thought she wanted me to take her to the pharmacy herself after her bloodwork, when I talked to her on the phone last night, but when I got there this morning, she said she was prepared to “pay again”. She’s still convinced she’s being double charged and cheated. Meanwhile, they’re bending over backwards to help her!

Anyhow, this left my mother with a week of pills and no one with the code to put them in the lock box. She’s already had her Monday morning pills, so when no one showed in the evening, she took them from the new package, since the other one was in the lock box. It was pure chance that she took the right day’s pills, since she ignores that completely and gets furious that they can’t give her pills from missed days.

It took me a while to get things straight, and I had to check and recheck things because it just didn’t make sense. When I went into her lock box on Friday, she had a bubble pack that would be finished on Sunday, and a bubble pack with just Monday on it, plus one set of morning pills from a day (a Thursday) that got missed.

The person who saw her Tuesday morning put the new bubble pack into the lock box. The lab requisitions sheets were on the bottom, of course, so I had to take everything out to get them.

The thing is…

Tuesday’s pills are still there. All of them.

The older bubble pack should have hat the two Monday evening bubbles still full.

They were empty.

So what did my mother get, yesterday? She mentioned that an empty bubble pack got thrown out yesterday, but that would have been the one that was finished on Sunday. Did that one also have a full Tuesday’s pills in it? I hadn’t thought so. I had no reason to look too closely at that one.

Meanwhile, time went by and the home care aid didn’t arrive when she was scheduled. My mother started saying, oh, she doesn’t feel like coming today… She is convinced that when days are missed, it’s because the home care aids just don’t feel like doing her pills. Just her, though. She doesn’t believe that the rest of the people on their schedule list aren’t getting done, either.

Finally, I decided to call the number for the scheduler at about 9:45 (this is relevant) and left a message explaining that the aid had not arrived yet, and that I had to take my mother for blood work, so I would do her meds myself.

When I got home, I found a message on the answering machine. It was the scheduler, telling me they didn’t have anyone for my mother’s morning med assist.

The time stamp on the message was 10:01.

*facepalm*

Meanwhile, as we were going to the lab, my mother asked me to make sure I stayed to watch while her blood was being drawn. I asked why, as I’m always there, and she basically said, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. It took a few hours to drag out why she was asking, but the last time we went (In May, because the June one got missed when she got verbally abusive and I walked out), she said I had left to do my own thing – she was very accusatory about it – which I couldn’t remember at the time. While I was not there, she basically thinks the guy faked drawing her blood. She wanted me to be there today to watch and make sure he really did take her blood. Except it was a different person drawing the blood this time.

I brought up the telephone doctor’s appointment after the lab work was done, and she said there wasn’t one. So I brought up my calendar for May. There was my appointment to take her to the lab, then a week later, her follow up telephone appointment with the doctor. Which I remember, because there was nothing of concern with the results, so her assistant called and talked to us, instead. After the call was done, my mother’s comment was, so… the doctor didn’t want to talk to me…

My mother doesn’t remember that call.

I was flummoxed by my mother saying I had left her, but I did finally remember, after I got home. There was a time I’d taken her in, and I had my own requisitions for blood work and an EKG to be done. I wasn’t able to do the blook work, as it needed to be fasting, but I did get the EKG done. So that’s when she would have had her blood drawn while I wasn’t there. I was in another room, getting wired up.

So my mother believes the home care aids are not showing up to do her meds on purpose (she says they want her to die), and she thinks the tech that took her blood last time, faked taking her blood.

It was a very strange day with her, this time!

I had expected to do her grocery shopping after this was done, but she told me she didn’t need one. I asked more specifically about things and ended up getting her a few little things she was running out of. When I got back with the groceries, she had an envelope ready for me to make that had a prepaid envelop. She asked me to mail it for me, and insisted I take it in person, not just drop it in the mail box. The mail box apparently got stolen or vandalized once, some 10 years ago, so she refuses to use it.

By the time I left my mother’s it was just past 11.

It felt like it should have been much later!

She had her Meals on Wheels coming soon, so I left her to that.

Once home, the heat was really kicking in, and I had lots to do when it cooled down, so I did try to take a nap, after updating my siblings about the visit with my mother. I called the home care coordinator and left a message about some of the stuff, but she didn’t call back today. My daughter reminded me that I’ve been wanting to book an appointment with my doctor for this month, instead of next month, and requested a tandem appointment. She now has her own follow up to do, regarding her referral for a reduction mammoplasty. So we are now both booked in the middle of the month.

I have a field of vision test right after that, but I think I’ll have to reschedule. My daughter would have to drive me home, since they’ll have to dilate my eyes. That’ll be less than two weeks from her ganglion eviction, and she might not quite be up to driving quite yet.

Meanwhile, my husband has his first physio appointment at the new pain clinic tomorrow.

July is working out to be a very busy month for medical stuff!

Anyhow.

I am happy to day I did succeed in getting a nap in – I ended up sleeping almost 4 hours! The heat is really draining the energy out of me.

I did, however, get lots done in the garden this evening, once things started cooling down!

That will get it’s own post – or more, though 😊

The Re-Farmer

A productive evening, and kitty updates

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Well, my attempt to get stuff done early before things got hot, taking a nap, then continuing working outside when it got cooler almost worked.

The nap part was a fail.😄 I can’t complain too much, considering what kept me up was adorable snuggles and kisses from Cheddar. Usually, he just slams himself against my back when I sleep, so I wasn’t going to turn down a snuggle session from him.

My daughter got out the riding mower to do the inner yards, then grabbed the loppers to remove the little poplars that are starting to take over one side of our driveway. By then, it was getting into the hottest part of the day, and that area is in full sun, so she just got a start on it for now. There are a lot of them do remove, so any progress at all is bonus.

Unfortunately, the hottest part of the day tends to be late afternoon, early evening. We hit 28C/82F by 3, and it stayed there until about 6, which is roughly when I headed out again.

The garden definitely needed a second watering, in this heat. I took the time to do a bit of weeding, using the hose to make it easier to remove their roots. Despite being watered in the morning, it was amazing how dry the soil was already.

I’ve been thinking on where to thin by transplanting some of the zucchini, and the surviving strawberry plants from last year that have been neglected, but didn’t get to that this evening. The weeding was needed more.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to get it done tomorrow evening, after I get back from helping my mother with various things. I called her to remind her I’d be there in the morning to take her to the lab for her monthly blood test, and she immediately started telling me to go to her place first, then the pharmacy. I wasn’t expecting to go to the pharmacy; her meds are supposed to be delivered. I suspect she intends to give them a hard time over having to pay for her meds. I think she’s re-convinced herself that I paid for all her meds when I picked up her inhaler. Well, I’ll find out tomorrow, I guess.

I got the supports I picked up for the black currant bush in the South yard set up.

These are dollar store supports marketed for tomatoes, but I find them handy for other things. I’ve got two sets put together around the currant bush. After I got the first picture, I decided to raise the upper connectors almost to the top of the stakes, which you can sort of see in the second picture. The hard part was getting the stakes into the ground evenly, since I kept hitting rocks or roots or something. I think this will work out just fine!

I also got the string of solar powered LED lights set up. I decided to just wrap it around the top of the section of chain link fence between the two gates, with the solar panel set into the end of the top horizontal bar, rather than into the ground. I will check it out after it gets dark, to see how it works out. The yard light might be too bright for them to work, there. If that turns out to be true, I’ll move them to the driveway gate to replace the old string of lights on the fence, there. We used to have white Christmas lights strung together all along the fence line. I really liked how that looked but, for LED lights, they failed an awful lot, and I ended up not being able to find the right type of replacement bulbs. The little string of solar powers lights I’ve got there now has actually outlasted the Christmas lights rather handily!

While I was out and about outside, I found myself being followed by a little blue eyed beauty, and managed to get a few more photos. I just had to post the whole series of them…

The expression on Eyelet’s face after Stinky pushed his way between us was just hilarious!

The first couple of pictures come closest to showing how white his eyes can get at times.

The Cat Lady has said she will try to find a home for Eyelet; a Siamese cross can sometimes be easier to place than other cats, though not a lot people would be willing to take on a deaf kitten. I don’t want her to end up with yet another permanent keeper.

She sent me some security camera images today. She’s actually out of the country right now, and her mother is house/cat sitting. A strange cat showed up, triggering their cameras, and was lounging on the roof of a catio. He managed to get into the house and won’t leave. He was intact, had all the usual ear mites, fleas, etc expected in a stray, and has permanent damage likely from being hit by a car. She hasn’t even seen the cat in person yet, and has already spent some $700 in vet bills on him! After asking around, one of the neighbours recognized him as a cat they saw getting dumped this past spring. It ran off and disappeared.

….ggggrrrrr….

What is it with people, that they do that?

Now he seems to have claimed the Cat Lady’s house as his new home. Even though Cabbages has been territorial and going after him, he won’t leave!

Looks like they’ve got another cat. Not sure how many that makes now. I think it’s over 30 now!

So you can understand why I’m hesitant to have her take another cat from us to adopt out. Too many people have backed out of adopting, even after assuring that they understood that they were taking in a colony cat that would likely need more vet care than typical. The Cat Lady and her family have quite a few cats permanently living with them, and not just from us, because of that. There is, however, a rescue that specializes in Siamese cats. They were going to take Ghosty, once they had an open space for her.

They seem to have ghosted the Cat Lady about Ghosty, though.

I can certainly understand why the Cat Lady is bowing out of rescues at the end of this summer. Other small rescues have shut down this year already, for much the same reason. Burnout.

Of course, being deaf, Eyelet’s chances for survival are pretty low, and we can’t take any more cats in. We already have way too many inside, and we don’t have the space they should have. It’s very stressful for them, and causing problems.

Well, it is what it is, and we do the best we can.

What else can we do?

The Re-Farmer

Shedding a new toy?

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

We have a couple of long haired tabbies that look very much alike, that are quite feral. A while back, I spotted one of them with a strange thing on her back. It turned out to be a mat of winter fur, still stuck to her.

It finally dropped off! It’s a good thing I saw it on the cat first, because that was one heck of a thing to find on the side walk in front of the sun room. 😄

I was able to get a picture of the cat’s back this morning.

There’s a bit of a bald spot where the mat was dangling. It must have been such a relief for her to finally get that off!

As I was finishing my morning rounds, I came up on Sir Robin. He had discovered the clump of fur and was having an absolute blast, attacking it! I got a little video of that, which you can see if you click through, above. We have toys available, scattered around in the sun room and the isolation shelter, but I’ve never seen them being played with. A clump of fur, however… 😂😂

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: developing tomatoes and peas

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

The garden and future food forest got a thorough watering this morning, and I spotted some future harvests, too!

The first image is of the Spoon tomatoes in the main garden area. I’ve been seeing tiny tomatoes developing for a while now. I had expected them to get much taller before forming tomatoes – when we’ve grown these before, they always got really tall and lanky. This year, they seem to be staying short and bushy. I’m not bothering with pruning side branches away, after seeing some videos about that from Gardening in Canada, so I was expecting them to be bushier. These are still indeterminate tomatoes, though, which are more of a vining type. Which is why I made sure they had a nice, sturdy trellis to climb. We’re just into July, though, so maybe they’ll still get taller. We’ll see.

In the second image, we have our first sugar snap peas developing. There are quite a few more flowers blooming now, too. Most definitely the biggest, strongest and healthiest peas we’ve ever grown, this year. I don’t know if it’s the location, this year’s weather, or what, but I’ll take it!

The final photo is my morning surprise. There are Sub Arctic Plenty tomatoes forming! Yes, these are super short season tomatoes but, like the Spoon tomatoes, the plants haven’t really grown much since being transplanted. The plants are so short, the developing tomatoes are inside the protective collars!

The Chocolate Cherry and Black Beauty tomatoes are getting taller, at least, and getting to the point that I’ll need to start clipping them to their supports, soon. Those, we’ve grown before, and I am expecting them to get quite a bit taller – but then, I was expecting the Spoon tomatoes to get quite a bit taller, too! There were flowers blooming on all the tomato varieties when I transplanted them, but I remember that the Black Beauties took a very long time to ripen. The plants had loads of tomatoes, and I remember they tended to crack and split a lot, long before we had any ripe enough to pick.

It should be interesting to see if there is any difference in how quickly they ripen, this time around.

The Re-Farmer